Jill MacDougall

Jill MacDougall was born in Orange, New Jersey to Elizabeth Johnson and Kenneth MacDougall. The family moved often around the U.S. as well as abroad. After her high school the family moved to Germany and Jill went to Strasbourg, France to study French. There she met and married Denis Franco and had three children. Jill and Denis co-founded a theatre troupe with friends in Strasbourg and acted and directed plays for local productions.

Jill and her family moved to Katanga province of (then) Zaire in 1969 to teach in a secondary school and develop a theatre troupe. Jill and Denis co-founded the Mwondo theatre troupe in Lubumbashi, a group that developed theatrical performances based on local themes and local languages. In 1981 Jill moved to Montreal, Quebec. Jill earned a Master’s degree from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) with a thesis written in French about the Mwondo theatre and then a doctorate in Performance Studies at New York University (NYU). In 1989 she joined Stanley Yoder in Philadelphia and they married in 1991.

All her life Jill worked as a writer, teacher, theatre director, editor and translator. Her love and respect for others permeated her work and her relationships. Jill is survived by her husband Stanley Yoder and by three children: David, Alicia and Jonathan, along with six grandchildren. David Franco (Annabel Reyes) has twin boys named Max and Loïc and lives in Brooklyn, New York; Alicia Franco (Hugues Tremblay) has a son and daughter named Ariel and Raphaëlle and lives in Montreal; Jonathan Franco (Fabienne Papin) has a daughter and son named Ludine and Emrick and lives in Montreal.